Hello All!
I've been a lurker for a while and am finally posting.
For the past 2 weeks, I have been on a 1300-1500 calorie diet and doing kickboxing 5x a week. Not cardio kickboxing, the real kickboxing! It is a form of HIIT, so my trainers say I should keep burning even after class is over. Each session lasts 45 minutes.
I am currently 170, with a mini goal of being 150 by the end of May. However, I have not lost any weight on the scale for the past 2 weeks! What am I doing wrong? FYI, it is not a plateau, I just started my healthier lifestyle 3 weeks ago.
Here is a sample of what I ate yesterday from my fatsecret profile - about 1440 calories:
Calorie Breakdown:
Carbohydrate (42%)
Fat (35%)
Protein (23%)
I make sure to add some MUFAs (mono unsaturated fat) for my snacks, and I think that ends up being most of my fats. I eat a lean cuisine breakfast and lunch, and I have no starches for dinner, only veggies and protein. I eat every 2 to 3 hours (set an alarm on my phone). I take fish oil supplements every day/ My kickboxing classes are at night, around 7-9pm. I usually get about 5 hours of sleep. I know that I need to step up my water intake and amount of sleep, but work a high stress job that takes up most of my day.
I think you need to up your protein more and decrease your carbs. Lean cuisines are loaded with sodium and those might make you retain water. So maybe you can try cutting down on your lean cuisine and see if that makes a difference.
Nina125's suggestion to increase your protein intake is a good one. I know LCs are quick and easy (I've been eating them for lunch religiously for years), try some scrambled eggs on a high-fiber tortilla, a Greek yogurt, or something similar for breakfast. To save time in the morning, you can even keep small containers full of prepped tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, etc. ready to go to throw in your eggs. Or, eat hardboiled eggs with a couple of slices of turkey.
I think you must try to get more sleep. Even if you're a person who seems to function on 5 hours' worth nightly, plenty of studies show that lack of sleep impacts hormone levels in your body, which in turn impact weight loss. (Google "sleep weight loss" and you'll get a taste of the findings.) Instead of attending a 45-minute kickboxing session 5 times per week, you might consider skipping 1-2 sessions and instead going to bed an hour earlier. I'm serious - even if this seems counterintuitive. If you truly can't go to bed an hour earlier, perhaps you'll have to accept a slower loss; I feel it's that important to seeing the scale budge.
Ditto on what the previous posters said. Protein - sleep.
And you are also only talking about two weeks. I know it sucks - but weight doesn't always come off in a smooth, even, linear pattern. Some weeks you will stall, others you may have a "whoosh". I find, too when I am working out particularly hard, I don't always see the scale go down until I have had a few days rest after. They say your muscles retain water as they are working on building themselves.
The first placeid look is diet
you are getting *around* 1400 a day. how do YOU KNOW? Lean cusines *and any packaged food) can be off, calorically by 20%!! FDA rules... that menas what you *think is 400 cals, COULD BE really 480 X 2 times a day, whivh is an extra 160 calsd, so suddenly you are eating *around more lke 1600 cals. Then theres dinner/snacks. Are you weighing your food on a digital scale? ALL OF IT? how do you KNOW how muh you are eating? are you using a app that you entr "apple" into and it gives you an avg apple amount of cals (approx 100). or do you WEIGH the apple, and know it is really 53 grams, and therefore closer to 130 cals, or really only 70? (just throwing numbers) You said you try and get fats in, are we talking peanut butter? that MUST be weighed, NO TABLESPOONS.. you could be off, literally by as much as 100 cals a scoop! do you guesstimate your cooked chicken is about 4 ozs, cuz its the size of your palm, or do you weigh it, UNcooked, to 112 grams, therefor knowing it is 120 calories. Do ou count your dinnertime veggies? gues what? broccoli has cals! I Eat over 300 cals worth of lettuce, and broccoli, etc a day... it must be weighed and counted... 85 grams equals 30 cals ish. s**T, i hav to count the cals from my pieces of sugar free gum (3.5/piece) and equal packets (3 cals/pckt) im not suggesting you be THAT obssessive, BUT----DO you chew gum? use splenda? PAM? I cant believe ts not butter spray? The PAM and ICBINB Spray are hard to count, but guess what, they have calories....
Im not trying to come down hard on you, but you give us such detailed info about your workouts, then say, i eat "about" 1400-1500 a day. FAT LOSS IS 100% DIET.
when you are eating *that * los (1400) every cal counts, and you have to weigh your food. you could easily EASILY be underestimating by HUNDREDS of cals a day, putting you right at maintenence.
mkroyer is totally right. If you think you are running a significant deficit and you are not losing weight you HAVE to get super super super strict about calorie counting. I sometimes get a little lax about guesstimating and eyeballing, but the minute I start to plateau or gain I tighten it up- I know there's always room to really get more accurate on this. When I do I realize how many more calories I was consuming than I thought...
What am I doing wrong? Break it down for me
